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TWN
Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Mar26/34) TWN MC14 Update No. 7 Silenced in
Yaoundé: The WTO’s Quiet War on Civil Society Kuala Lumpur*, Goh Chien Yen - The World Trade Organisation's secretariat has banned civil society demonstrations at MC14 in Yaoundé, Cameroon, reversing assurances given to accredited organisations that peaceful protest would be permitted. The reversal came late on 25 March, the night before the conference opened. The Our World Is Not For Sale (OWINFS) network, a global coalition of trade justice organisations that has attended every WTO ministerial since the body's founding, was informed that no banners, signs or peaceful demonstrations would be allowed anywhere in the venue. Even silently holding signage was prohibited. Flyers left on tables were confiscated. OWINFS says the secretariat had explicitly assured that the "long tradition of peaceful demonstrations" would continue at MC14. On that basis, delegates travelled to Cameroon at considerable expense and paid to print materials. K.V. Biju of India’s Rashtriya Kisan Mahasangh, representing five million farmers seeking a permanent solution on public food stockholding, said he came to Yaoundé to make their case but found the space for advocacy shut down. “Our voices have been silenced because the WTO Secretariat no longer ensures that standard civil society activities like peaceful demonstrations and even banners are permitted,” he said. The ban marks the consolidation of restrictions first imposed at MC13 in Abu Dhabi, where civil society members were detained and all protest activities prohibited. Some basic activities have been restored in Yaoundé: distributing flyers, speaking with delegates and wearing political symbols are again permitted. But the more visible forms of dissent remain off limits. Melanie Foley of Global Trade Watch at Public Citizen, warned that the Secretariat was “allowing the previous repression to become precedent to stymie peaceful protest at all future WTO ministerials.” The WTO already grants civil society less access than virtually any comparable multilateral body. Unlike the UN climate or biodiversity processes, accredited NGOs at the WTO cannot observe negotiations. Peaceful demonstrations on the margins was the last channel through which civil society could make its presence felt where trade ministers gathered. Jane Kelsey, emerita professor at the University of Auckland and a veteran of six ministerials, said there had been “a clear erosion of the space available for civil society” under Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Priscilla Papagiannis of the Brazilian Network for People’s Integration (REBRIP) said effective participation required not merely presence but freedom of expression. If unchallenged, MC14 sets a new practice where civil society may attend, but not be seen or heard. For an institution struggling to justify its relevance and in desperate need of reform, “squashing democratic debate further decreases its public trust,” Victor Menotti of Demand Climate Justice pointed out. *With inputs from TWN delegation at MC14, Yaoundé, Cameroon.
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